On October 10th, Cube announced its new boy group Pentagon after the predubut show Pentagon Maker that was aired in May. The “Pentagon” refers to five essential elements that an idol must attain—vocal/rap skills, dance skills, teamwork, power/energy, and personality—in order to become “perfect.” At the showcase, Pentagon revealed themselves with the powerful group chant, “Ten-tastic! Hello, we are Pentagon!” The group explained that the phrase “tentastic” is a compound word of “ten,” the number of the members, and “fantastic.”

The title song “Gorilla” is a hip hop track that stresses masculine persona of the boys with powerful beat and brass sound. The lyrics are written by Seo Jieum who also wrote EXO’s “Growl,” Red Velvet’s “Dumb Dumb,” and Lovelyz’s “Ah-Choo,” while Pentagon’s member E’Dawn also participated in writing the rap lyrics. The album includes 7 songs, while the members who can also compose and write lyrics participated in the production process for 5 songs. For example, Hui explained that he composed and wrote lyrics for “You Are” after he participated in voluntary activities during his trainee years. The song talks about his thoughts and experiences he had during the voluntary activities.

Although Pentagon Maker was a survival program, all ten members were able to debut altogether as Pentagon members. The first dropout Shinwon said he is honored and happy to join the group. E’Dawn said he is so happy that he would like to change his birthday to the showcase day. The other dropout Yanan also appreciated other members for bringing him back to the group. Leader Hui confessed that he had a very hard time after missing the three dropouts. Eventually the winners asked the company to bring the dropouts back to the team for better teamwork and performance, and eventually all ten members were able to join the group. The group also appreciated their company fellows including CLC, Hyuna, BTOB, B2ST and Cube Entertainment’s staff members for supporting them during their exhausting album-making process.

Although Japanese member Yuto and Chinese member Yanan never learned Korean before they came to Korea, they were fluent in Korean after learning the language during the two years and a half of traineeship. Yanan said he was worried when he first came to Korea because he never lived with foreigners and never learned Korean before, but now he appreciated the members for speaking Chinese for him and warmly welcoming him.

Leader Hui stressed that they were able to get a chance of performing on public stage and monitoring their performance from the television show by filming Pentagon Maker. He lastly emphasized that the group wishes to become Cube’s next boy group that demonstrates BTOB’s vocal skills and B2ST’s performance skills. Kino further reminded the last element “personality” and stressed that they all wish to become idols with good personalities as Cube’s many groups are well-known for their kind personalities.

From previous experiences, we as K-pop fans know what is important in the K-pop world. These ten talented boys with good musical skills, teamwork, energy, and personality will invite us to the ideal K-pop world. I’m pretty sure, it’ll be “tentastic.”